A Factorial Analysis of Student Support System in Distance Education.

This paper reports distance learners' satisfaction with the support system provided to them by a distance teaching institution. Based on the Simpson's model of the support system in distance education, this study proposed the research framework on students' satisfaction of quality that consisted of two factors, namely, the academic and the administrative factors. Satisfaction with the quality of various dimensions of the academic and administrative learners' support system was measured; these dimensions ranged from the initial process of registration as a student, orientation, course related support system such as the academic organiser, the course guide book, video conferencing, the annual residential intensive course, the library and regional centres to course achievements and evaluation processes. Factorial analysis was conducted to determine the inter-relationships amongst the dimensions and to identify a set of latent dimensions that is not readily observed. The results of the factorial analysis revealed that the satisfaction with the quality of the learner support consisting of the administrative and the academic dimensions was consistent with the Simpson model of the support system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]